Assume the Position: Memoirs of an Obstetrician Gynecologist by Richard Houck MD Read Free Book Online

awakening that since I was already in medical school it really didn’t matter.
     
        When I graduated from Princeton, my proud parents were in attendance. Both sons had graduated from Princeton, and my brother was now at Harvard Law School. My medical school applications to what were considered top schools all over the country were still pending.  Ultimately I received rejection notices from every school with the exception of one which put me on a wait list, and ultimately I was rejected from there as well when no openings occurred by the start of the academic year.  The common theme was that they weren’t sure I could handle the science load.   I only had the bare minimum college sciences and majored in Sociology and Science in Human Affairs, the very things I had effectively argued for in my thesis that I perceived were needed for the future of medicine in this country.  It was a blow to my ego, and a very unsettling and emotional time.  All the hard work and dreams I had for myself, and my core beliefs about medical training and medicine as a career for me, were being tested. It was the first time in my life I had doors shut in my face, and it was not a good feeling.  I needed to regroup, and figure out a plan.
     
         Dejected, I spent the summer in Philadelphia living with my girlfriend of several years.  I worked at a day camp for rich kids from ‘Main Line Philadelphia’, as the rail system was known that snaked through the upper crust suburbs of Philadelphia.  I was the Nature Man at day camp.  I had fun with the kids for a few months and developed a life long love for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the outdoors.  We hiked, fished, boated, played games – in general, a great way to decompress before tackling life again.  After a restful summer with the kids, I found a job selling insurance and worked as a room service waiter in the evenings and weekends at the Marriott Hotel Philadelphia to supplement my meager funds. My parents, from a different generation, did not approve of my living arrangements with my girlfriend, so I financed my own life at this point.  They had paid for my time at Princeton, for which I was forever grateful, but I had jobs all four years while on campus because I could not ask them to finance my social life, nor did I feel like explaining to them what it was like since I knew they would not approve. Besides, I was motivated to be on my own and was exploring life as I saw fit. Not to mention the great fried shrimp they served at the Marriott restaurant, and the loads of athletes and celebrities I served in their rooms from Maury Wills of the Dodgers, to Stevie Wonder on the keyboard, and Joe Frasier shadowboxing in the mirror while I served him.
     
        In the fall I enrolled as an undeclared major in the graduate school at Villanova University in suburban Philadelphia, by enrolling in one graduate level course in Biochemical Genetics, which although not easy I seemed to master quite well.  If the medical schools weren’t sure I could do well in advanced sciences because I majored in sociology, I would show them otherwise.  This time I was more thoughtful and applied to every school in Pennsylvania, my home state, rather than all across the country.  I was called in to Hahnemann Medical School in downtown Philadelphia for an early interview.
     
     
     

    (Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital, now Drexel University School of Medicine.)
     
    As luck would have it the professor from the admissions committee randomly chosen to interview me was a biochemical geneticist.  After some brief background discussion he asked me to explain to him the difference between DNA and RNA, the intracellular basis of all biochemical genetics that makes us each unique.  Fresh off my final exam in biochemical genetics, I couldn’t have been better prepared. The acceptance came a few weeks later.  It was an exciting time.  I felt like my persistence, hard work, and